Ally Malinenko

Seagulls

The sea gulls freeze in the air
floating, cut from silk and hung on a thread
just below the clouds that are strapped to the sky
milky white and liquid
the sharp bird beaks cutting a line
as they float like words above me

I can see my breath crystallize in the morning air
and still smell the ocean,
and feel the salt stick to my palms
even all the way up here
over the car exhaust,
and dog shit.

I can still hear the waves, and the roll of broken shells
cracking into each other
over the sharp staccato of Chinese
and the screaming brakes of the subway.

Spring is coming,
tunneling through the ground
upsetting the graves,
overturning the rotten wood and bones of the dead
like a giant nimble worm
blind and intuitive
stretching and contracting in the determination of yearly renewal.
I can hear her rumble,
I can hear her coming.

And so can the gulls,
and that is why they are floating.

 

Molecules and Little Bricks

Over the pot of Darjeeling tea
she told me that had they kept their first daughter
they might not have had me
and I realized that I had never considered that possibility

and the molecules and little bricks
that come together
and apart each day
to keep me going,
shifted again ever so slightly
in this conversational undoing of everything I am.

That knowledge sat in the corner of the tea shop
waiting for me to notice it.
Knowledge nodded at me, when I finally met its gaze.

We spent the rest of the day
discussing the generations
and the people who have passed
or have yet to come
and fondled the books
sampled the peaches and apple slivers
and laughed in the train station.

The land that I was raised on, bounding over the gravestones
and bones of the Iroquois, has seeped into me.
Their longhouse, this family that I am threaded to
is something that cannot come undone.

But I still thought about the grains
of black tea
the slivers floating at the bottom of my cup
like little strands of DNA
unraveling, shifting,
Coming apart and together like the cells in my fingertips,
my thighs,
the length of my hair
to make someone new.

and I tried not to think of her dead
buried
unmoving
unraveling
but you know I did.
If I hadn't, I wouldn't have thought so hard
about the air in my damaged lungs
and the heavy crown that is this truth.
I am cleaved, split in two
two writers
two people
two daughters
two lives
the sloughing off of yesterday
and the recreation of tomorrow.